Review

Keanu

Keanu, the first theatrical film from the comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, features a lot of gunplay and one adorably bad kitty cat.
Keanu, the first theatrical film from the comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, features a lot of gunplay and one adorably bad kitty cat.

A tale of code-switching, the enduring appeal of George Michael's "Faith" and a feline who is all kittens to all people, Peter Atencio's Keanu marks the first big-screen vehicle for Comedy Central sensations Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. Playing middle-class cousins forced to impersonate gangsters so they can rescue the movie's eponymous pet (what do you mean you don't follow that logic?), the actors make the transition with ease in a consistently funny action-comedy. This may not be adequate compensation for the end of their series, which gave them so many more opportunities to try on personalities and take one-gag ideas for a spin, but it will delight the show's fans while winning over others unlucky enough never to have seen it.

The actors do, in fact, get to play two extra roles here. They enter the film as a pair of "phantom" drug dealers from Allentown, Pa., who shoot up a rival druglord's operation in a Carmina Burana-blasting sequence that could easily have been a Key & Peele parody. During the mayhem, we witness the escape of the victim's pet: a tiny gray-and-white kitty so precious that even a hypothetical, couldn't-be-real movie critic with a deep-seated dislike for cats would find him adorable. The kitten scampers across L.A., winding up at the doorstep of Rell (Peele), who has been in a heartbroken stupor since his girlfriend dumped him. Suddenly, life has meaning again. Naturally, Rell names his savior Keanu.

Keanu

86 Cast: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Method Man, Nia Long, Will Forte

Director: Peter Atencio

Rating: R, for violence, language throughout, drug use and sexuality/nudity

Running time: 98 minutes

Two weeks later, Keanu vanishes in a break-in. (In a jab at film conventions typical of these comedians, the sky erupts with rain just in time for Rell to realize the cat is gone.) Rell and his cousin Clarence (Key), whose wife and daughter are gone for the weekend, set out to find the cat they're sure has been kidnapped.

Which is less likely: That the men go to a rough-part-of-town strip club expecting to find Keanu, or the cat is there -- renamed New Jack and now doted on by Cheddar, a drug merchant played by Method Man? Though they enter the club wearing their dorkiest duds, Clarence and Rell try to fit in with thug-speak and puffed-up posturing. They claim to be the Allentown assassins when the opportunity arises, and stumble into an arrangement that could only make sense here: If they go out on a drug deal with this crew, they'll be given New Jack as a gesture of respect.

Long before the men have run out of funny ways to flub the epithet-laden slang they're trying to re-create based on movies they've seen, Clarence and Rell are neck deep in actual crime. While making a delivery of Cheddar's new drug, they find themselves at a movie star's home and wind up leaving with blood on their hands. (Let's not spoil the surprise cameo, but her performance is enjoyably deranged.) They also leave their new crew changed in a way few viewers will be able to predict.

Getting Keanu back can't be this simple, and it isn't. The kitty has won hearts all over this City of Angels, and our newly emboldened (if not exactly toughened) heroes will stare death down, or more likely cower before it, a couple of more times before this quest is complete. Tragically for Key & Peele fans, none of their daring feats require cross-dressing. That's an oversight that simply must be corrected in the pair's next feature.

MovieStyle on 04/29/2016

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